The present invention relates to a technique of controlling a collaborative work activity conducted in a work space by a plurality of user objects so that the collaborative work activity can be displayed and utilized. For example, the present invention relates to a technique of automatically recording the contexts of communication and the document objects used in an activity and supporting the reuse of the thus recorded information so that the users can grasp the mutual contexts.
Concerning the technique of grasping the mutual contexts of work between users who are working at physically distant places from each other, there is proposed a method in which an image of the work space is monitored in real time by the workers working at physically distant places from each other, as disclosed in “P. Dourish, S. Bly; Portholes: Supporting Awareness in a Distributed Work Group, ACMCHI' 92, 1922” and “Sakakibara, Tadokoro, Miyazaki, Kato: Mounting of Message Communication Function in Media Space for Dispersed Workers, Workshop of Group Ware of Information Processing Society Vol. 40-3, 2001”.
Further, there is proposed a method of providing various types of awareness such as availability (whether or not it is possible to use and make an access), process (progress of work), perspective (estimation of behavior of other users), environment (events occurring outside the activity) by the respective different user interfaces, as disclosed in “C. Stein Field, C. Y. Jang, B. Piaff, Supporting Virtual Team Collaboration: The Team SCOPE System, ACM GROUP 99, 1999”.
There is also proposed a method in which major events are recorded in a time series by a simple operation of buttons in a collaborative work conducted at a site such as a site of disaster or a site of keeping guard on an event and the thus recorded information can be utilized by a plurality of users, as disclosed in JP-A-2001-184397.
There is also proposed a method in which the content of a collaborative work is recorded in addition to providing awareness of the state of work, and as a method of utilizing the content of the collaborative work for making access to information, the history of operation applied on the document is saved corresponding to the point of time so that retrieval can be made according to the editor, name of business and reference date. There is also proposed a method in which the history of document operation conducted on a desk-top is saved in a time series and a plurality of users grasp the state of the desk-top at an arbitrary point of time and make access to the document used at the point of time, as disclosed in JP-A-11-39320 and JP-A-2000-259607.
As a method of handling the history of making access to a document in an situation moving various actual work spaces, there is proposed a method in which the history of making access to a document is saved corresponding to the time and place and the thus saved history is displayed so as to make access to it, as disclosed in JP-A-2001-84206.
In any of the above method in which the activity can be grasped by users who are positioned at distant places from each other and the method in which access is made to an object according to the state of an activity stored in a time series, the state of an activity and the history of an activity adopt an architecture according to a centralized control which is previously prepared corresponding to the context of the group activity. Therefore, it is impossible to realize a function of saving the past history of an activity in common while exceeding the previously determined users and the frame of a collaborative work.
In the case of a task or project in which a plurality of members are active to accomplish a common object, in a working environment in which the members are working being dispersed at a plurality of positions which are distant from each other and further members are acting while moving in the offices, it is important that the members grasp the contexts of activities conducted by each member in real time and also it is important for the members to have a sense of togetherness while they are working. Even when the organization activities conducted in the past and the information contents such as documents, which were generated and referred in the other organization activities, are saved so that they can be utilized in common, it is important that the users can make access to them so that they can be effectively utilized according to the contexts.
A large number of methods have been proposed to solve the above problems, which will be described as follows. There is provided a system in which the members can give awareness to each other. Information contents such as documents, which were used in activities, are saved in a server and utilized again according to the contexts.
However, the main object of the conventional method is operation conducted on a document located on a desk-top. Therefore, the conventional method does not give consideration to a case in which an activity of collaborative work conducted in an actual work space, for example, a state in which a plurality of users have a document in the same work space in common is saved as the history of the activity and utilized again. It is one of the problems to be solved by the present invention that the history of an activity in the actual work space is recorded according to the actual working contexts.
Further, the conventional method has the following problems. According to the method of the prior art, the history of an activity is intensively controlled by one server prepared corresponding to a working group. Therefore, in an environment in which the members of the working group are frequently changed or the working group ceases to exist, the history of an activity, of the collaborative work conducted in the past can not be successively utilized.